China is Harper's trump card, but it must be used adroitly

Prime Minister Harper is showing that he is mastering the laws of geopolitics. The Keystone decision showed that Canada should not take it for granted that the U.S. will be the market of choice for our natural resources and other goods and services. China is his trump card.

Fen Osler Hampson is the Chancellor’s Professor and Director of The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He is the author of nine books and editor/co-editor of more than 25 other volumes on international affairs and Canadian foreign policy.

As Harper heads to China this week, it would be tempting to say that Canada (and Harper) is simply succumbing to the natural laws of gravity as the world’s fastest growing economy drags us into its orbit. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, Harper is finally showing that he is mastering the laws of geopolitics and the need to manipulate the balance of power, especially in our relations with the United States.

Early in his prime ministership, Harper actively resisted China’s powers of attraction. He went out of his way to snub Beijing by laying out the welcome mat for the Dali Lama, Tibet’s religious leader, and not showing up at China’s global coming out party, the 2008 Olympics. The Chinese were not amused. They snubbed Harper in return.

Harper did not seem to care. He and his officials argued that Canada had a “principled” foreign policy and that we were not about to sacrifice our commitment to human rights and democracy simply to ply our wares with one of the world’s autocratic regimes. Ironically, left wing critics of Harper’s foreign policy during those early years of Harper minority government rule are now crying foul at the prospect that Harper is not going to give the Chinese another tongue lashing on human rights this time around as he heads to Beijing.

So what has changed? Is Harper sacrificing his principles simply to make a deal with the Chinese? Yes and no. Harper wants to take our trading and investments relationships with the Chinese to a new level. But he also understands that the national interest should be the driver of our foreign policy and the challenge is to strike the right balance between interests and values. Experience also shows that the Chinese are more receptive to quiet diplomacy on deeply sensitive issues, like human rights, but only after one has built a relationship with them.

What we are also seeing is a prime minister who is deeply troubled by a new dynamic that is at play in our relations with our most important trading partner, the United States, one that threatens the core of our prosperity. President Obama’s decision to delay and then deny approval of the Keystone pipeline — while offering faint hope that his administration would entertain a revised route for the pipeline — was the proverbial canary in the coal mine. It underscored Obama’s insensitivity to a project of vital interest to his neighbor and ally, and spoke tellingly of his inadequacy as a global leader.

Keystone was a “non-decision-decision” that showed that Canada should not take it for granted that the U.S. will be the market of choice for our natural resources and other goods and services. The forces of U.S. protectionism, environmentalism, and the vagaries of U.S. domestic politics in a fragile and anaemic economy — albeit one that is showing some signs of sputtering to life again — are ones that we cannot control. Like corks, our entreaties to Washington bob and disappear in a boiling ocean of political dejection and rejection.

In Keystone’s aftermath, Harper made a key, consummate strategic ploy — to play the China card to get Washington’s attention. To say to Washington if you don’t buy our oil the Chinese will and we will build a pipeline across the Rockies to prove it. And even if Keystone is eventually built, we won’t be held hostage to U.S. pricing and politics in any future energy deals.

He is also saying that we now see ourselves as an Asia-Pacific power in what will be an Asia-Pacific century, and reinforcing that message by crossing the Pacific now.

With Washington’s paranoia about China, which it fears will eclipse America’s economic primacy on the world stage, China is Canada’s trump card. However, it must be used adroitly in a market and region with more growth potential for Canada than the U.S. in the next decade and where countries, particularly China, play by their own rules.

Harper must ask what China is going to give us in return and what we ultimately want out of this new relationship. Is it simply to sell tradable commodities, which, by definition, can be sold anyway if the price is right? The Chinese concede nothing by buying our natural resources and they aren’t doing us favours no matter what the spin.

Harper must now decide what other commercial interests of ours are at stake. For example, he needs to negotiate reciprocal access for non-commodity businesses such as manufacturing, advanced technology, engineering, and other goods and services where the Chinese are highly protectionist.

With China’s growing footprint in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, we should also be looking to secure contracts for Canadian companies that have the know-how in those sectors where Chinese state-owned and influenced companies are doing business abroad.

Our new global economic policy with China and the U.S. must keep careful track of the quid pro quo as we play “the balancer.” We have real clout that comes from our position as a commodity superpower. Harper’s real challenge is to use it to our advantage.